On Fire (20 page)

“I know you asked me to give you space and let you work this out for yourself, and I was willing—for a time. I’ve been more than patient. And I never expected…” She blinked back more tears, squashing a rush of conflicting emotions. “Sam Cassain was
murdered.
Riley and I were nearly killed. Matt, this isn’t about you and your grief anymore.”

“It never was. That’s why you have to let me do this on my own.”

“What if you’re next? What if Riley finds your body washed up on the rocks? I know you gave Sam the money so he could probe the
Encounter.
You must have left a trail. The police are bound to find out—”

“They already know. I called and told them this afternoon. It wasn’t a crime, Sig.” He stood back, and she could see the impact she’d had on him. “If not me, Sam would have found someone else. He’d have stolen the money.”

“I’m glad you’ve finally told the police.” She held up her head, refused to give him one damned inch. “But I don’t see why you couldn’t see your way through to telling me.”

He didn’t answer.

“Because of Emile? Or because you knew I’d try to stop you?”

“Because it’s not your fight.”

As much as his words hurt, she didn’t wither. “Your fights are my fights.”

“Not this one.” His voice hardened, more against his own conflicting emotions, she thought, than against her. “I thought you understood.”

“Understanding doesn’t mean I’m patient, and it doesn’t mean I’m going to sit back and passively let you do whatever you want to do, get yourself killed, end up in jail. I
won’t.
We’re partners.”

“No, Sig. Not on this we’re not partners. We can’t be. It’s too dangerous.”

She stood her ground. “If it’s too dangerous for me, it’s too dangerous for you.”

He hissed through his teeth. “Damn it, what kind of man would I be if I didn’t see this thing through? If it’s my fault Sam’s dead—” He broke off, raked a hand through his hair. His eyes were a searing blue, radiating all his frustration, anger, grief, fears, everything he tried so hard to keep banked down. “This is my doing, Sig. My problem. The fire at Emile’s, your pregnancy—how much more reason do you need to stand back?”

“How much reason do
you
need?”

Suddenly he looked exhausted, defeated. She ached for him. But she couldn’t back down.

And neither could he. “It’s more reason for me to redouble my efforts.”

She clenched her fists, refused to cry. “Damn you, Matt.”

“Don’t ask for what I can’t give.” He sighed, his expression softening slightly. “Let’s not fight. You look tired. Can I get you anything?”

“A good lawyer.”

He swore under his breath and stalked across the room, slamming the front door on his way out. Sig didn’t have the energy to go after him. She collapsed onto the couch, her body still hot with the feel of his touch, his kisses. She sobbed, cried, swore and finally threw the needlepoint pillows across the room one by one.

She should have let him stay the night. At least then she’d know where he was. So much, she thought miserably, for taking action. All she could do was sit in her empty house, wait and worry.

Riley picked up a few things at her favorite market in Porter Square and almost deluded herself into thinking her life was normal. Which it wasn’t and maybe never would be again. Murder, fires, sabotage, a crazy grandfather and a shot-up FBI agent coming off a self-imposed exile.

“Phew,” she said, walking up the shaded street with her bag of groceries.

When she turned the corner onto her street, she saw Straker sitting on her front steps. He didn’t get up. It was a warm evening, and he wore jeans and a dark navy pullover that made his eyes seem darker, duskier.

“You beat me here,” she said.

“I thought that might be a wise move.”

“It wasn’t wisdom,” she told him, “it was luck.”

“You have a lousy track record, St. Joe. I don’t trust you to mind your own damned business for a change.”

She climbed the steps with her groceries. He still hadn’t gotten up. He seemed at ease, thick legs stretched out, his back against the steps.

“I haven’t been sneaky. I just haven’t been particularly lucky,” she said.

“Did you stop in Camden on your way back?”

She nodded. “Sig left for Boston this morning. She’s back at her house on Beacon Hill. I don’t know if that’s smart—Mom didn’t, either. But there’s not much either of us can do about it. I’ll call her, make sure she’s okay.” She glanced down at Straker. “How’d it go with Lou?”

“Our good and true sheriff is still hoping he’ll get me into his jail before this is all over. He’s on the case. I don’t know how long he and CID can sit on the pictures before word gets out.”

“The sabotage of the
Encounter
is big news.”

“The suspected sabotage. It hasn’t been proven.”

He got to his feet, and she felt a warm shudder, knew that yesterday and last night had settled nothing between them.

“You’re looking a little spooked, St. Joe. Does that mean I get the futon tonight?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, Straker. I’m not spooked by you.” Unraveled, maybe, but not spooked. She balanced her grocery bag in one arm and whipped out her keys. “And you can stay at the Holiday Inn.”

“Not a chance. Emile asked me to look out for you. I’m a man with a mission.” He stood next to her as she unlocked the door; even in the night light, she could see the scar above his eye, his wry smile. Shot up, six months on a deserted island, and he was as confident as ever, as sure of who he was. “You wouldn’t want to come between me and my mission.”

She pushed open the door, let him walk in ahead of her. “Are you going to check my place for bombs and booby traps?”

“For starters.”

So much for normality.

Her apartment almost seemed to belong to another person, as if she’d taken a quantum leap in her life since she’d left for Maine. She eyed the clutter, the work that meant so much to her, the little things that soothed her soul and just made her smile. She didn’t know how she could go back to being the person she’d been before she’d found herself trapped in the fog and had stumbled on Sam Cassain’s body, before she’d made love to John Straker.

“I’ll put the groceries away,” she said. “You make sure nobody’s been fooling around with my lightbulbs.”

She was just kidding—she told herself she was just kidding—but when Straker started poking around in the corners of her apartment, she couldn’t deny a sense of relief. Nobody’d blow up her apartment tonight, anyway.

She set her bag on a cleared stretch of counter and unloaded the milk and juice. Her phone rang, and she shut the fridge, debating whether to let her machine take the call.

She picked up the receiver, and Sig said, “Riley? Just checking in.”

Riley frowned. “You sound terrible.”

“Physically terrible or emotionally terrible?”

“Both.”

“Well, not to worry. I’ve got my feet up and a talk show on the tube. I’ll be fine.”

“But you’re not fine right now,” Riley said.

“Matt was here a little while ago. We—” She seemed to choke back a sob. “I’ve never felt so helpless in my life.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take the night off. When I’m painting and run into a brick wall, I find it best just to stand back, abandon the project for a while, then come back to it fresh.” She inhaled, sniffled. “I know you’d find a way to go through the brick wall if you had to, but I have to—”

“Sig, do you want me to come over?”

“No, no. I’m fine. Are you alone?”

Straker appeared in the kitchen doorway and gave her a thumbs-up. No linseed oil rags draped over her lightbulbs. Riley sighed. “No.”

“John Straker’s there?
Riley.
”

“It’s not what you think.” Well, it was, but she wasn’t getting into it with her sister. “There’s something you need to know. Be discreet, okay? It’s not public yet.”

She told Sig about the
Encounter
’s engine, Sam’s pictures, Emile’s theory of sabotage. Straker didn’t look too happy about it, but he didn’t jerk the phone out of her hand or rip it out of the wall. Riley left out nothing, not even the parts about her brother-in-law’s role in bringing up the
Encounter
’s engine.

When she finished, she said, “Are you still sure you don’t want me to come over?”

“No.” To her surprise, Sig sounded firm, more in control. “I need to mull this over while I watch the talking heads.”

She hung up, and Riley let out a long, cathartic breath. She was restless, her mind racing in a thousand different directions at once. She turned to Straker. “How about dinner out? There’s a quiet little Thai restaurant a few blocks from here. We can walk over and pretend we’re normal people.”

“I didn’t know any normal people lived in Cambridge.”

“Straker, you are so damned obnoxious. I don’t know how anyone stands you.”

He grinned. “You stand me pretty well, as I recall.”

“That was post-traumatic stress. It took jumping out of a burning building to get me into bed with you.”

“Ah.”

“No sane woman would go to bed with a shot-up, burned-out FBI agent who never could get along with anyone.”

“But you’ve regained your sanity?”

She eyed him, felt the traitorous reaction, low and deep. She licked her lips. “I’m trying.”

“Try away, St. Joe. Come on, we’ll do dinner out. It’ll remove temptation for an hour or so.”

Unfortunately, she thought, temptation would be right across the table from her.

But maybe he, too, needed some semblance of normalcy, some balance between the life he’d led for the past six months and the highly charged atmosphere, the danger and questions and fears, of the past week—which, she presumed, was more like his “normal” life.

They sat in the back of the tiny restaurant and ordered too much food, and by unspoken agreement,
they talked about things other than fires, murder and sabotage. He wasn’t a regular guy. She’d known that when she was six. But he was even less of a regular guy at thirty-four. Regular guys didn’t rescue hostages from terrorists. They didn’t, she thought, have friends like Emile Labreque, and they didn’t touch her the way John Straker had.

“Do you like being an FBI agent?” she asked.

“I’m good at it.”

“That’s not the same.”

He smiled. “It suits me. It’s good work, rewarding work. For a while back in April, May, I thought I’d quit, buy a lobster boat.”

“But you’ve changed your mind,” Riley said.

“I figure dead bodies would keep turning up until I got the point.”

When they walked back to her apartment, she found her hand in his, found herself leaning against his strong shoulder, whispering, “You don’t have to sleep on the futon.”

“What about the Holiday Inn?”

“A cheap Mainer like you paying for a room when a free one’s available?” She smiled. “I don’t think so.”

“A free room and a willing woman. Life could be worse.”

She punched his arm.

“St. Joe, you’ve been waiting for years for me to walk back into your life. You need a man who doesn’t tiptoe around that big mouth of yours.”

“You didn’t walk back in, Straker. You barreled in.”

He squeezed her hand. “Sexier that way.”

When they reached her apartment, he made no pretenses, just scooped her up and carried her back to her bedroom caveman style, smothered her laughter with a breathtaking, spine-melting kiss. He was indeed, she thought, an intensely physical man, with an enthusiasm for sex that was staggering, that made her feel as if he would never get enough of her.

They had a cycle going. The more he wanted her, the more she wanted him; the more she wanted him, the more he wanted her. On and on it went, until the cycle fell in on itself and they couldn’t stop, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t imagine release.

And when it happened, when release came, it wasn’t gentle, or slow, or easy, but soul penetrating, washing over them in great, searing waves, as if it had a logic and a will of its own, one that bypassed all careful reasoning, all knowledge, all common sense.

“I can’t fall in love with you,” she whispered, drawing the blankets up over them as she settled against his shoulder.

He slid his hand over the curve of her hip, moved lower, eased his fingers between her legs. “Of course you can’t. Falling’s not your style.”

And his mouth found hers, his tongue probing with the same erotic rhythm as his fingers, beginning the cycle again. “What’s your style?” she asked as he kissed her throat, took a nipple between his lips.

“I’m better at action than words.”

He raised up off her and eased his fingers away, then entered with a deep, hard thrust that made her cry out with its intensity. He didn’t follow with another,
but stayed in her, caught up her hand in his and locked eyes with her. A man of action. A man of great physical needs. He was asking her not to fall, but to take control, to choose.

“Again,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.”

“As if I could,” he said, thrusting harder, deeper.

Much later, she slipped out of bed, pulled on a bathrobe and went into the living room. She turned on a light and sat on the futon with a clipboard and a pencil, drew a line down the middle of a yellow pad. On the left, she jotted everything she knew to be a fact. On the right, she jotted everything else.

When she finished, her hands were shaking and she was fighting tears. There was more under the “everything else” column. None of it looked good for Emile.

Straker came and sat beside her. He’d put on jeans, nothing else. He took her clipboard, examined it. “Not bad. You’d make it through Quantico.”

“I’m afraid for Emile,” she said. “He’s always believed in destiny, fate. That’s how he could take on so much for so many years, without fear. He’s never been able to look over his shoulder and see his enemies coming. And Matt—” She gulped for air. “I’m afraid for him, too. He’s in over his head, isn’t he?”

Straker was expressionless. “He should tell the police what he knows. Bow out and let them do their job.”

“Sig couldn’t stand to lose him. Straker, she’s pregnant, she can’t—”